Delusions of Grandeur
by Firefly264
Summary: Squash them like bugs under your heel, show them that you are not to be ignored or forgotten. Let them show you that you are not to be forgiven. Sadstuck stream-of-consciousness ficlet. Eridan POV. See beginning A/N for warnings. ONESHOT.


**Pairing(s): past EriFef, implied SolFef  
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**Warnings: ANGST ANGST ANGST and character deaths and spoilers for Kanaya: Return to core and all the stuff that goes down afterwards  
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**Additional Notes: if you don't believe me when i say angst i literally saved this as eridan being sad and making me sad  
**

* * *

You loved her like nothing and no one before. For sweeps she was your whole world, everything you needed and would ever need, and you thought she felt the same way.

Flushed from the moment you first saw her, she was the one who first approached the idea of a partnership. You had initially balked at the idea of hunting lusii (you didn't know what you'd have done without Seahorsedad, and you honestly hated the idea of taking a wiggler's guardian away forever), but you needed to be close to her. She was perfect in every way; how could you refuse her? Even when she said she might want to be your moirail, and you kept your mouth shut for once because you didn't want to rush things, or when she ignored you for days on end when you _needed_ her (what mattered was that she always came back, and you could be happy again).

You needed her like your gills need salt water, and you thought she needed you too. You thought maybe she would love you the way you loved her, too dark to be pale but never darker than red, because how could you _ever_ hate her? You thought if you brought it up when she was already happy and smiling and everything you wanted to make her, she would laugh, say _of course -Eridan, you seally boy!_

Because she made you the happiest troll alive, and maybe you _were_ a bit dependant on her but after spending life alone and rejected for so long you felt like a battered ship in a safe harbour just being near her. And you thought you thought you thought maybe she wanted-

Maybe she wouldn't want to leave you.

But she did, she does, she wants you out of her life in the worst way possible. She left you for a peasant, someone so far below her, so _undeserving_ that it makes something broken inside you start to fester and rot. You feel yourself sinking down into an abyss of your own creation as you slaughter angels and the world goes coldgrimdark, only to be lit up in carmine and cobalt and you watch it all burn.

You thought you were right, you thought you were justified; you thought you were _better_, and she hates you for it because you were too stubborn to change. Not even for her would you let go of delusions of grandeur. The journals _said_, the history books _said_, your caste _said_, they all said and you _listened_ like the fool you are.

You listened to her laugh like bells and his voice like nails on chalkboard and you wanted them to hurt.

You needed to get out, needed to go before you did something you would regret because how could you ever hurt her? But there stands the jadeblood, and in her hands is putrid, wretched hope, and the disease inside you says destroy it destroy her destroy all of them. Squash them like bugs under your heel, show them that you are not to be ignored or forgotten.

Let them show you that you are not to be forgiven.

Now there's blood on your hands, on your shoes, dripping down the walls. You loved her like you loved no other and yet tyrian stains behind your eyes, teeth crack underfoot, shards of a lost future are swept aside and forgotten along with the corpse of its keeper. You stagger and collapse, retching until the rot inside you is forced up and out, but the dank hole where it festered remains, creeping tentacles of the coldgrimdark tangling with violet-run veins and urging your forward, numbing you until the moment cold metal meets your side and you're torn to pieces by vengeance-driven wrath.

You realize you're going to have to face her again, and in the minutes it takes for the agony to cease you let in the wretched poison and hope for isolation.

* * *

******AHAHAHA I'm a terrible human being**  
I really like Eridan but I also really like sadstuck help me.  


**I take great joy in comments, and even though I generally won't respond unless a direct question is asked, I take all constructive criticism into account for my next piece. So maybe take a moment to review?**


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